I’m currently in the middle of developing an iPhone app with a big reference database (using Core Data backed with a pre-populated sqlite database). Once the app is live and deployed to a client’s iPhone, I need the facility to update/insert a small amount of data. What are best practices / methods for doing this?
There may be occassions when the frequency of updates will be daily for a month or so. Other occassions when a data update happens once every few months.
What is the recommended way of doing this? Note, I don’t anticipate any data model changes for these updates — this is purely an insert/update of data.
At the moment I’m starting to research the use of push data notifications (q:payload size restrictions?), app store updates (q:code/data model only, not data updates?) and the use of my own ad hoc data server (which the app connects to routinely to check for updates).
Can anyone please provide me any pointers on the above?
Thanks in advance
IIRC Push Notifications have a maximum payload of 256 bytes. Enough for notification purposes, but not more. Your app would still have to download the actual data from your own server after receiving the notification.
Note that the app bundle is not writable on the device. So if your app needs to update the data store, you should copy the pre-populated database file from the app bundle to the app’s documents directory on first launch.
App Store updates would certainly be feasible (especially now that Apple seems to have gotten its review process down to a few days at most) but note that an App Store update will always replace the entire app bundle (code and data), so if your pre-populated reference database is big, the customer would have to download it in full every time.